The plant in Skövde is called SkEP and it stands for Skövde Engine Plant, which is the only engine plant within the Volvo Cars Cooperation (VCC). Volvo Cars Engine (VCE) is a manufacturer and supplier of engines and components.

As globalization becomes more apparent and the competitors improve their operations, the customer demands are increased. More and more customer specific products are requested. One consequence is a larger set of variants of engine designs, which means that a larger amount of components is needed in the material facades (MF).

Volvo Cars has developed a new production system called Volvo Cars Manufacturing System (VCMS) to respond to this variant growth. By learning, implementing, sharing and by a standardized work SkEP will, eliminate waste of resources and streamlined production by implementing lean processes in the factory.

Questions answered in the report are:

* Can the buffer level be removed and will that lead to any critical articles?

* Can the material facade be placed on wheels?

* Can the supply methods that VCMS advocates, be used in today's production layout?

* Is repacking necessary for any articles?

The thesis has been carried out by time measurements, by information retrieval from the company's material handling system, with help from VCMS documents and by interviews.

Today's layout in SkEP exists because of historical reasons and many parts are firmly anchored both physically and mentally. In order to highlight the consequences that occur, a detailed description of the current situation has been made.

The different parts that the impact assessment deals with are, the removal of the buffer level, ASRS influences, supply principles according VCMS, establishing a marketplace and a discussion of the benefits with straight lines. The impact assessment shows that the problems can be solved using the measure proposed by the group.